


open doors and vodka shots

by evilythedwarf



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 21:49:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7657939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilythedwarf/pseuds/evilythedwarf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David finds Regina at the Rabbit Hole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	open doors and vodka shots

**Author's Note:**

> From the tumblr prompt: "Something where Regina gets drunk- maybe where David or someone sees her out because she hasn't been so discreet about the fact she's had far too much? I don't really know, I'm sure you can think of something better! Either Swan Queen or Dragon Queen"
> 
> OK, so this is World Without Robin again, because reasons. Assume he left town with Marian, and she was, actually, real Marian. Everything else sort of happened the same way.

He hesitates to call. He’d like to believe he’s wary of betraying Regina’s trust, that he would much rather give her the space to deal with her problems herself, in whatever form she chooses to, but the truth is he doesn’t know what reception he’s going to get when he finally makes the call.

Maleficent’s phone number is scribbled on a piece of paper he got from Ruby of all people and he stares at it for a long time before dialing.

He could have called Emma, who is generally in good terms with Regina. The problem is, she’s not in good terms with him, or with Snow. There’s something there, between them, something has been missing since they got her back, and he doesn’t know what it is, and he doesn’t know how to fix it, and as much as he’d like to work on it, tonight is not the night.

Sadly, there’s no one else. It is truly sad, and not just because David really, completely, absolutely doesn’t want to make this phone call, but because there should be more in a person’s life. There should always be more. They haven’t always been on the best of terms, he has actively hated her in the past, but now, after everything, after the sacrifices she’s made and the lives she’s saved, after what she did for Emma, he can’t watch with arms crossed as she does this to herself.

He finally dials the phone, his fingers, clumsy and too big on the touch screen, press the green button and he’s calling the only person he thinks Regina will listen to tonight.

“Hello?” Maleficent answers, a deep and steady voice.

He takes a deep breath.

“Maleficent? It’s David Nolan,” he says, his cursed named rolling off his tongue. “I need your help.”

She doesn’t reply, doesn’t make a sound, but at least she hasn’t hung up on him yet.

“I need you to come to The Rabbit Hole,” he tells her, aware of how ridiculous he sounds, how unbelievably absurd it is for him to be asking her for anything at all. “It’s Regina,” he adds quickly. “She needs you to take her home.”

Maleficent, again, doesn’t reply. After about 30 seconds she hangs up the phone and he thinks she might come, she could, maybe, possibly, come. She’s Regina’s friend. Everyone knows that. Maleficent and her daughter had even lived with Regina for a while, before they moved to the house in the woods. She’ll come, he thinks.

Until she does, though, he sits in a chair, two spaces away from Regina. Regina with her hand tightly wrapped around her 3rd vodka of the night. She is by no means drunk, but she is not sober enough to drive herself home, and if she is here in the first place, then whatever place she is in, emotionally can’t be a good one.

It was Tom, the bartender, who called him. He said she was scaring off his costumers and it must be true because other than a few occupied booths, the place is deserted for a Saturday night.

“Regina,” he starts, but she cuts him off with a raised hand. She doesn’t even look at him and the dismissal is so complete, so absolute, that he struggles with finding something to say.

“Don’t even try,” she says.

So he doesn’t.

He waits though, because at least she won’t be alone, and that’s important too.

After about 15 minutes, though it seems much, much longer to him, The Rabbit’s Hole’s double doors are dramatically pushed open and Maleficent, dressed like some kind of 1950’s femme fatale right out of the movies he watches when Neal is keeping him awake at night, walks towards them.

She doesn’t even spare him a glance, focuses immediately on Regina, one of her gloved hands curls around her neck in a gesture so intimate David feels like he’s intruding, but neither of the women even seem to notice he’s still there. Regina leans against the touch and it only makes him more determined to see this through. To make sure she’ll be all right.

“I needed someplace different,” Regina tells the other woman. “Someplace we’d never-”

“I know,” Maleficent says. She steps closer to Regina, wraps her arms around her shoulders and helps her up, and everything he knows about Regina tells him that she’s going to pull away, that she’s going to insist she’s fine and ask the other woman to leave, but she doesn’t. She stands up, with Maleficent’s arm curled around her waist, and her own hands limp by her sides.

They both look at him then, Regina rolls her eyes at him but offers him a nod before she turns her head around and she whispers something into her friend’s ear.

“Thank you, Tom,” Regina says, nodding at the bar tender, though she doesn’t sound very thankful. “David,” she tells him, and just that, just his name, is a sentence in itself.

Maleficent barely looks his way as they walk out of the bar together, and even that, he’s sure, was only so she wouldn’t collide into him.

The door closes behind them, and there he is, in a bar, alone, with Regina's abandoned drink in front of him. 


End file.
